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Quote of the Day: Savoring the Enemy’s Losses
“Grant had captured an army of at least 13,000 men, a record of the North American continent. He showed mercy toward the conquered force, giving them food and letting them keep their side arms. Avoiding any show of celebration, he refused to shame soldiers and vetoed any ceremony in which they marched. ‘Why should we go through with vain forms and mortify and injure the spirit of brave men, who, after all, are our own countrymen,’ he asked.” — from Grant, by Ron Chernow
“If your enemy falls, do not exult; if he trips, let your heart not rejoice, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and avert his wrath from him.” —Proverbs, 24: 17-18
For all his overindulgence with alcohol, Ulysses S. Grant was a brilliant general. Although he had some embarrassing losses, he was relentless, strategic and smart. Yet he agonized over those left dead on the battlefield, whether they were his own men or the men of the Confederate army. He was not only determined to lessen their misery, but tried to treat the wounded and dead on both sides, with dignity and compassion.
If you are a Christian or Jew, you are also called by G-d not to indulge in schadenfreude or gloating over another’s loss. I can guess at the reasons (not being a religious expert): G-d, for one, wants us to remember that the enemy was also created in His image. We are also supposed to love our enemies, because when we savor their defeat, we lose a piece of our own humanity.
Keep in mind that wins and losses don’t just apply to battles. What about politics? What about court trials?
Beyond those explanations, what is your understanding of this divine instruction? If you’re not religious, do you have a different perspective? If you are religious, do you try to follow this rule? Do you disagree with it?
Published in Culture
I would not know polticially, as the right does nothing but lose.
This is an excellent question. If we look at Proverbs as a practical statement as opposed to ecclesiastical, then it seems to be saying something similar to “be sure to treat people well as you go up the ladder and they will not treat you poorly when you come down the ladder”. Life has ways of turning the tables so it is unwise to treat a foe so badly that you will receive the same or worse in the future.
We like to think of shame as having insufficient power in our current culture. But shame remains and is powerful in individual lives. If someone is effectively shamed (fairly or unfairly) it builds resentment and a powerful desire to pay it forward. It is a risk whenever you shame someone regardless of the justification. So if it must be done, one has to accept the attendant risks.
Machiavelli advised that if you defeated someone you had a choice to kill them or treat them better than they thought they deserved in the circumstances. For if you did not kill them, but treated them badly, you have created a dangerous foe.
I like your use of interconnectivity with these two quotes. Beautiful!
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Gosh, so many good points, @rodin! Shaming used to have its role in our culture (such as the shame of being an unwed mother), but I think in those times, it not only taught the mother but others of the important values we try to maintain in society. But now, the shamer gets shamed. Everything is supposed to be tolerated, and even celebrated (such as a baby shower for the unwed mother).
But I digress. My personal struggle is with the court case with which I’m engaged; every little “victory” on our side leading up to the trial is one I am not just relieved to hear about, but one I relish. If we win, will I gloat? Hard to say until one is in the moment.
Susan, I have to confess to feeling pretty schadenfreudtastic last night when the news of Eric Schneiderman’s scandal and resignation broke.
“Call me master” was schadenfreudlicious.
In my earlier comment I did not address the ecclesiastical aspect: what letting certain emotions take purchase in our lives does to us internally. Empowering the negative feelings of a foe is an external risk; empowering your own feelings is an internal risk. What is the difference between the righteous “Yes!” and the unrighteous “Yes!”? Are you relishing a personal triumph, or a triumph of justice? To my mind the harm of any emotion, if harm it be, is what is the next act that it promotes?
If the other side keeps things in perspective. But if they go overboard with craziness way out of proportion, it’s very difficult not to get a little extra lift from their wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Yeah, I know. I think we’re being called in most cases to avoid gloating, but sometimes it’s irresistible.
Awesome. Truly. Yes, those are very helpful distinctions to make. But since we are flawed and emotional beings, it can be hard to predict how we will respond to a given situation. I will aspire to the approach you offer here. Thanks.
Ummmmmmm……… help me out here, @addictionisachoice. I can be a little thick sometimes. Or are you just suggesting a physical likeness? Yes, I see that . . .
Have you seen DreamWorks’ Prince of Egypt? It is my favorite depiction of Moses and Pharaoh.
It shows them as brothers and friends. I’m inclined to find it more true than the old 50s and 60s epics of Pharaoh and Moses being adversaries and rivals.
What made me like it so much is that through that retelling, I saw how much the plagues, especially the Passover, sat ill with Moses. Moses was pleading with Pharaoh because he cared about Pharaoh.
No other Hebrew at that time would have cared. Having been enslaved, beaten, and their babes ripped from their arms to be tossed in the Nile, they wouldn’t have seen Pharaoh and the Egyptians as human. Moses saw Pharaoh the way God saw Pharaoh and likely mourned and grieved for him.
Sorry, yes, just doppelgranters, er, doppelgangers.
And of course in the Torah, G-d commands the Israelites not to hate the Egyptians. Same premise. I haven’t seen the film, but I’ll put it on the list. Thanks, @cm.
Actually, there is an INCREDIBLE play that explores this in great depth. It makes for super reading, and I provided part of the soundtrack for its first performance….
Check it out! http://chanacox.com/pharoah.shtml
Nice post, Susan. Surely, rising above schadenfreude is Godlike. Indulging in schadenfreude is human, all too human.
Sort of on the same topic, Alexander Pope once wrote, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Kent
Or as they used to say in the corridors of the publisher I used to work for, “To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.” :-)
For the Christian the mark of Holiness, is humillity (you can have humility and be unholy too). Rejoicing over the vanquished is the opposite, “pride”.
Not to be maudlin, just an observation. I wish I didn’t fail at this so often.
Me, too, @kevinschulte.
Yep, I’m a sinner, and schadenfreude is one of my biggest sins (not being a Reagan member on Ricochet is a close second). My only defense is at least I take pleasure in the people who deserve it. I know there’s a wide gulf between Adolph Hitler and Hillary Clinton, but I’m glad both lost . . .
I’m of two minds on this…while I theologically understand that we are to treat our foes with respect & honor, I sometimes feel that there isn’t enough “drink(ing) out of the skulls of our enemies!” going on (metaphorically, of course….maybe…..sometimes….).
Part of warfare is psychological; to keep with the Civil War theme from the OP, Sherman’s burning of Atlanta & march to the sea was nothing but psychological warfare, intended to quash within the enemy any remaining will to fight, thus brining the conflict to a swifter end (and, thereby, reducing the number of casualties).
Does celebrating in victory not have a place within this?
Bruce Catton points out that Grant took it further than the Chernow quotation shows:
The Battle Cry of Freedom is a Union patriotic tune written by George Root in 1862 that Abraham Lincoln adopted as his election campaign theme song in 1864; the South liked the music but not the words, so they wrote their own. Boge Quinn is a southerner; he is playing a fine instrumental version here.
Good question, @bigdumbjerk. I think that you are to do everything you need to do in order to vanquish the enemy. But do you delight in their deaths and losses? Even with a given battle, it is one thing to single-mindedly destroy the enemy. How we respond to victory–appreciating the victory–is not the same thing as relishing their deaths. The differences may seem subtle, but very important. Does that make sense?
I must confess I haven’t finished Chernow’s book; the war is not yet over, as far as I’ve read. You probably know that Lincoln would not punish the Confederate soldiers, either. It seems that Lincoln and Grant were of like mind on this topic.
Alinsky tactics work. Critical Theory is real.
I have completely changed my mind about this stuff.
Thank you! This is nowhere near that level, but I often think of Pharaoh confronted with Moses and the plague of frogs and calling on his
sorcerersscientific advisory board.“No problem, your majesty, this is old technology.”
“Just what I needed. More frogs.”
I’m not sure this is really very complicated. It’s a truism of folk wisdom, like don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.
And why? As the Proverbs quote says, because it might make God change his mind, and you will be the loser! It’s a superstition that it’s bad luck To celebrate too early. Tempting fate. Hubris.
And okay, so the Jews weren’t s’posed to hate the Eqyptians. Their hatred woulda been gratuitous given that God–whatever his emotion toward them–had already inflicted horrible,suffering upon them, culminating in murder of their children! (Of course that was only tit for tat, but still ..)
in the NT we are enjoined to love those that persecute us. I think because if you can pull that off, it is really irritating to your persecutors at first, then if it persists, kinda scary, like Jesus words from the cross: “Father forgive them- for they know not what they do..”
I loved the instrumental that @ontheleftcoast shared of the “Battle Cry of Freedom” so I looked for a vocal version. There are some wonderful photos, too
A bit earlier in the book, Catton put it like this about the period just before Grant’s last campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. It is a very clear and concise exposition of the relationship between the political and the military aspects of war in a democracy.
It’s a short book, beautifully written. One could do much worse than read it and then read, or reread, Grant’s Memoirs.